The tone for the world's bitching is set by Amnesty International and other NGOs, who only care about Palestinian lives:
Editorial: The ultimate human right
After the Jerusalem bus bombing on August 19, Amnesty International the most powerful international human rights organization issued an unusual condemnation, including an explicit recognition that deliberate killings of civilians by Palestinian armed groups constitute crimes against humanity.
Unfortunately, any hope that this statement marked some change in this organization's lopsided approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict was quickly disappointed.
A few days later, Amnesty issued an 80 page single-spaced tome entitled "Israel must end its policy of closures and restriction of movement." The heavily illustrated report was accompanied by a glitzy public relations campaign, kicked off by a press conference and television appearances highlighting accusations against Israel, including claims of collective punishment and a catalogue of violations of international law.
Case studies sought to document the suffering inflicted on Palestinian individuals and families, and many of the 71 references came from official Palestinian groups, the entirely discredited International Solidarity Movement, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
All of this stood in sharp contrast to the pro-forma half-page statement on the Palestinian suicide bombing, in which no individual terrorists and political leaders are held responsible, and all the Israeli victims remain anonymous.
If this clear bias came from a less respected, venerable, and powerful international organization, it perhaps would not be worth mentioning. But Amnesty International is a superpower in the world of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with substantial influence in setting the international political agenda.
As documented by NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org), Amnesty has an annual budget of over $30 million that supports a full-time staff of over 350, with thousands of dedicated and well-meaning volunteers, and resources to mount impressive public relations blitzes. Fellow NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch and Oxfam, as well as numerous Palestinian versions, follow a similar formula, and together they constitute the core of the campaign to demonize and delegitimize Israel.
In September 2001, these NGOs created the agenda for the infamous Durban conference that revived the "Zionism is racism" movement, laying the foundation for the new anti-Semitism.
The impact of NGOs such as Amnesty is magnified by the media and diplomatic community, which often treat their reports and analyses as sacred text, without independent analysis or confirmation. Under the human rights halo, these organizations were quick to repeat the claims of Palestinian propagandists during the IDF's Operation Defensive Shield.
In the case of the Jenin refugee camp, for example, journalists and diplomats, such as the UN's Terje Larsen, used the reports of Amnesty and Human Rights Watch to justify allegations of "Israeli war crimes" and "excessive use of force," while ignoring the context and terrorist infrastructure at the center.
Following the ideological lead of the NGOs, journalists and diplomats ignored the risks that the Israeli forces took in attacking from the ground instead of the air to avoid civilian casualties, at the cost of the lives of 23 soldiers. In this grossly distorted concept of human rights, Israel, by definition, can do no right, and the Palestinians do no wrong.
It is about time that someone watch the watchdogs. NGOs such as Amnesty have hijacked the sacred cause of human rights and distorted it beyond recognition where the ultimate human right the right to life is given short shrift if those lives happen to be Israeli.
These NGOs routinely deviate from their stated goals, distorting contexts through misleading generalizations, selective reporting, politicization of the principles of international law, and reliance on unsubstantiated "evidence." Beyond the gross moral offense of exploiting human rights norms created after the Holocaust to undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish State, the universal impact of this malfeasance goes much deeper. With no remaining credibility in this area, the reports and campaigns on humanitarian issues in other regions and conflict zones produced by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, and other groups are equally suspect.
After thousands of pages of biased anti-Israeli reports, campaigns, and press appearances, it will take protests and resignations by members of these organizations to push Amnesty and the other major NGOs to halt this practice. In order to move beyond the fa ade of universal human rights, and remove the impact of propaganda and prejudice, entirely new organizations and safeguards are necessary.
The NGO community will only regain credibility when it is no longer a vehicle for justifying terrorism and other basic human right abuses, and when the Israeli victims will no longer be nameless and faceless.
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